____________________________________________________________________________ Cox Enterprises | Karen Manley
Cox builds a culture where employees trust the business to do the right thing. Karen wants employees to feel comfortable sharing sensitive information with her, so the legal team can give the best possible advice.
She believes legal leaders shape how information flows.“ If people feel like they must spin things for legal, that’ s a problem. I want people to feel safe being honest, even when the situation is uncomfortable.” That philosophy has helped legal become a partner instead of a barrier.“ When employees trust us, we can solve problems faster and get better outcomes,” she says.
Operational improvements and efficiency
In leading the subpoena response team, Karen has developed operational improvements that boost efficiency and reduce risk. Handling subpoenas and legal requests, often from law enforcement, takes precision, speed, and careful management of sensitive data. When she joined, she didn’ t assume existing processes
were set in stone.“ I wanted to understand every single step and ask whether it actually mattered,” she explains.
She asked her team to walk her through their workflow and explain the purpose behind each task. If a step didn’ t add value, she questioned it.“ If no one ever looks at a file we’ re creating, why are we doing it? At some point, you just say,‘ Let’ s cut it,’” she recalls.
By eliminating low-value work, she created room for automation. Karen didn’ t start by looking for new tools.“ We looked around internally first until someone said,‘ We already have that automation somewhere else. You just need a few tweaks.”
By adapting existing systems, the team automated many routine subpoena tasks and kept human review for complex matters. Karen says,“ Automation is great for repetitive work, but judgment calls must be made by people.” Today, automation handles most of the team’ s workload, enabling faster response times without sacrificing human oversight.
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